Trump’s Hypocrisy on Free Speech

We were supposed to marvel at the ‘pomp’ of Trump’s state visit to Windsor Castle. Sure, there was also a smirk or two. But can’t the British monarchy really put on a great show? And even if it is for a cantankerous old man, aren’t they smart to humour him in order to get something back?

But there are important developments that this light-hearted coverage misses. The first is how Trump and the far right have shifted in relation to free speech.

Remember when the bigots screamed that they had a right to abuse Muslims or trans people verbally? Remember when Vance claimed that free speech was being ‘eroded from within’ in Europe?

Now that is all over. Trump says that if you say ‘horrible things,’ you could be in trouble. He even tweeted that he was going to designate ‘Antifa’ as a terrorist organisation. They had, apparently, been saying ‘horrible things’ about Charlie Kirk – even if there is no defined ‘antifa’ organisation.

The hypocrisy of the far right on ‘free speech’ was exposed before this. Under the spurious guise of ‘anti-semitism’, they have locked up organisers of Palestinian solidarity in colleges and threaten to deport them. In a pathetic copycat move, Britain has threatened anyone who holds up a placard saying ‘I support Palestine Action’ with fourteen years in prison.

But there was a new twist with Vance’s call that people should report ‘the radical left’ to their employers, to get them sacked. ‘Call them out, and hell, call their employer’, he declared, if they dared say ‘horrible things’ about Charlie Kirk.

Now Kirk said pretty ‘horrible things’ about George Floyd, a black man killed by a police officer in 2020 – calling him a ‘scumbag’ and claiming he ‘overdosed.’  But you cannot even mention this.

And so the real campaign of victimisation against ‘free speech’ has begun. Trump has given a lead, denouncing a comedian, Jimmy Kimmel, as a ‘sick freak’ and celebrating his sacking by ABC.

United Airlines said it had “taken action on employees” who made comments about Kirk. Nasdaq said it had “terminated, effective immediately” an employee over “commentary that condones or celebrates violence”. The Carolina Panthers football team, The Washington Post, law firm Perkins Coie and American Airlines have also dismissed staff for their public comments about Kirk.

This is a change. In the past, capitalists bought your labour for a set amount of hours, but what you believed or said outside the workplace was your own affair. Under Trump, however, a new form of capitalist dictatorship is being applied. You are not just economically dependent on the big corporations; they apparently now own your soul, your very thoughts, and what you say.

The right-wing hypocrisy on free speech amounts to this: Capitalists have been designated as the new controllers – they can determine whether you eat or have a  home on the basis of what you say.

That shift was best symbolised by the Windsor dinner. During past state visits a set of nondescript lackeys sat around a table while their leader was entertained. But in the careful choreography of Windsor, the big-time corporate leaders took pride of place. Here is a description of the settling arrangements:

Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, was seated beside the New York financier and chief executive of Blackstone, Stephen Schwarzman. Bank of America’s chief executive, Brian Moynihan, sat on that side of the table. So did Silicon Valley’s boy-king of artificial intelligence, Sam Altman, who was put beside Kemi Badenoch, the leader of Britain’s Conservative Party. Demis Hassabis was there (he runs DeepMind, the secretive London A.I. lab owned by Google), and so was Satya Nadella, the top dog at Microsoft, along with Marc Benioff, the Salesforce co-founder. Tim Cook, the head of Apple, was there, too.

Trump pretended he was a ‘man of the people’. Some were fooled into thinking he was really taking on the elites. But it was all a pretence – just like the talk about free speech.

Trump promotes big business, not working people. He wants to tear away the veil of parliamentary pretence and put them front stage.

You have been warned.